Ulearn so far... Keynote One

Well it is day two at Ulearn 08, and my breakout has just been canceled, which is a bummer because I was really looking forward to getting to grips with actionscript in Flash.

So I'll try and be productive and fill you in on some key ideas and points that have stood out for me so far in the conference.

Yesterday we were treated to a keynote shared by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson. They talked about the need to progress from merely sharing and connecting with others, to true collaboration and contributing to change. Her point that I most resonated with is that we now have as teachers an almost moral obligation to make sure that our students are equipped with 21st century skills. No longer can we justify that reading, writing and basic facts are our core learning areas.

I have some teachers in my cluster that are 'reluctant' technology users, some that are embedded in their teaching ideology...and they are great teachers. But the fact is, they won't be great teachers for much longer if they do not change and adapt, and this is a hard pill to swallow. I've heard the argument that schools can't incorporate inquiry learning, thinking skills, personalised learning because of decile rating, social demographics and behavior problems within the school.

"We just can't do that, because our kids would just run riot!". But it is these schools where it is needed most. These are the schools whose students do not always have access to a safe environment where they can explore, grow. If you are not going to provide them access to the tools they will need to succeed in the future, the ability to not only communicate, but to collaborate and make change...what is the point?

For me, the bottom line is, if you are a passionate teacher, excited about educating the future generations of NZ society, you will need to be just as adaptable as the learners in your classroom. You cannot say "the way I teach is fine, and it'll stay just fine."

Will Richardson put out the thought that in the future (and the future is now!), employers will be googling potential employees to see a 'true' picture of them as a person rather than looking at a paper CV. When my daughter is applying for her job at Apple when she leaves school, will the fact that she had a blog at age 7 have more weight than her high school exam results?

Will said that we need to teach our students how to live in an online connected world, that at the moment we have tech savvy kids that have no idea of how to have a productive presence on the web. Instead we are bombarded with millions of Bebo and Facebook pages filled with bikinis and drinking. Our task is to educate them to not only share their experiences appropriately and safely, but also how to tailor their online persona into something that complements and promotes them as a person.

How are you preparing your students to be Googled in the future? Change for the children.

Assessment and Inquiry Learning

Apologies to all that this is a little late...

Live blogged from our Hills ICTPD Cluster seminar with Kath Murdoch 5th September.

Clear, explicit learning intentions (know how, do and be)

The Essential Question - Provide a lens or funnel for the inquiry, prompts investigation and models an inquiring disposition.
These may be teacher constructed or co-constructed with kids.
They should capture the essence of the inquiry
They should be broad with opportunities for multiple 'answers'
They should matter -  to more than the students themselves
And they should contain significant concepts.

Clarify your intentions - what do you want students to understand through this inquiry?
A good understanding will be open and complex. eg: Although people are very different, there is a lot about us that is the same.
Avoid values in your understandings.
Understandings should be developmentally appropriate, inclusive of transferable concepts, demonstrable, 'Universal' (is it true for everyone?), and student friendly.
Remember, teaching intentions are assessment intentions. Take time to develop understanding and skill goals. Link these to the curriculum framework and make these expectations clear to students.

Explicit and co-constructed success criteria

Low achievement is often due to students not really knowing what is expected of them.
Co-constructing success criteria with your students helps them to build understanding and means a more valid assessment.
Show examples of both high and low quality product and have the students analyze the elements of each.

Careful Focus on prior learning and subsequent planning

It is important early in the inquiry to gather some baseline data to enable a valid assessment of growth.
This data should reflect both the understanding and skill of the students.
More than one tuning in strategy is preferable
Keep records to assist you with monitoring the students progress and for self assessment, and it is an important source of information for teacher planning. Lots of use of graphic organisers etc.

Pedagogy that encourages continual 'revelation' of thinking and understanding (especially through strategic questioning)

Time to rehearse answers,
Fish bowling: Group of students engaged in activity are observed by rest of class.
Think Pair Share
Assessment through play at junior level...be open to it at all times!

Formative and summative assessment - tasks embedded in the unit - assessment AS learning.
When well developed
Self and peer assessment - as well as teacher led.

Website find of the day: http://www.inquiryschools.net

My brother Rhys

My brother Rhys lost his battle with cancer last Sunday. Some of you who read my blog may have met him, and some of you have not, but I have found the importance of stories and that the best way to gain immortality is to share those stories.

Rhys was only 35 years old, he was my younger brother, and it was a one in a million chance that this has happened to him. So here goes, I'll share some childhood stories and help him live on. I hope one makes you smile and will stick in your memory.

I have been privileged over the last week to get to know my brother through other people eyes, to see him as the people he worked with knew him and loved him. Rhys worked at Park Road Post as a film editor in the DI department. I had no idea until last week of the very high regard he was held in by the Wellington Film industry, as was shown by the nature of his funeral and those who attended. If nothing else, go see 'Rain of the Children', a brilliant film that would not be the same without Rhys' influence.

Rhys loved adventures, and we got into plenty of those. I can remember at an early age that we wanted to build a hut together, and lacking a tree to build it in, we decided to create an underground one behind the garden shed at the bottom of the garden. I think we were about 6 feet down before dad found out what was happening.

We lived in Appold Street in Dunedin for most of our younger childhood, and the street itself provided plenty of adventures. It was very steep with a wicked hairpin bend at the bottom. An awesome and death defying circuit for go karts, scooters and bikes.

We both saved for our first bikes, Rhys got a BMX bike and I got a ten speed. I was always slightly jealous that he could ride and jump his bike around the abandoned section near the bottom of the street and I always begged him for rides...he always shared.

When it snowed, new opportunities for mayhem arose, and as you can imagine, having a steep hill with a hairpin bend made for perfect sledding. I’m sure the speeds we got up to made the neighbors hair curl, and of course we never thought about traffic. I can vividly remember one snow day when Rhys missed the bend and sailed on down the bank into the bush below. There was a path that led down through the bush and he had managed to land on it and slid for almost a kilometre before stopping. It took him about half an hour to drag the sled back up the steps to meet me.

We loved our holidays on the farm with our cousins, Alistair, Dougald and Hamish. We though it was a wonderland of fun, and even when we were working it was good times. Huts built in hay stacks, cutting barley, duck shooting and driving cars, tractors and bikes before we were at high school made us the stuff of legends.

Rhys got his love of music from Dad. Dad had a fantastic sound system, and was forever trying to improve the quality of sound from it, and whenever he bought a new linkage or component, he would call us in to compare pre and post sound. Rhys could always hear it, I just nodded along, but we would all have superb conversations about a huge variety of music and artists.

I remember when he was in about the fifth form, he had to do a project on Dunedin. He chose to go out and interview local bands, the ‘Dunedin Sound’ as it is now known. He talked with the Chills, the Bats, The Clean and many more. He not only interviewed them but got to know them and would often hang out with them long after the project had finished. I was always immensely proud that he had done that. Even then he would go the extra mile for his passions.

We are gadget boys, we both have always loved things that plugged in and had buttons on them. Dad brought home a Dick Smith computer when we were in our early teens, it must have been one of the first home computers ever available...it had a tape cassette drive and took about half an hour to boot up. We would spend rainy weekends punching machine code into it, so that by Sunday night we could chase a little green dot around the screen with a bigger green dot, but we loved it.

He always followed his passions, the biggest example of this I know of, is his leaving New Zealand to follow Heather to Japan. She is a passion he never got tired of following.

Before he left, he studied Russian and History at University, but on the side got into film studies and I think in the end film studies won out. Later, we always had the super 8 Rhys and Heather film festival when they returned each year from Japan, artfully chronicling the vivid snippets of life that so captured Rhys’ imagination. So it was no surprise to hear that he was going to the South Pacific film school when they both returned from Japan.

He was the fun uncle, our kids always loved when the Bonneys from Wellington would visit, because Rhys would always take time to play and spend time with them. Train sets, dress ups and soccer games. They loved his hugs and then would clamber all over him, much to their delight and our dismay. He was one of those people that children just warmed to immediately.

It’s hard to understand that he is no longer going to be part of our adventures in the future, but I am immensely glad of the times that we have already shared. Rhys lived a life full of love, experiences and achieved dreams. A life at 24 FPS. I miss you Rhys, but you are forever in my heart.

Robocup Nationals

Today was the big day, the Robocup Nationals held at Point View School in Auckland. The school is massive, and has a large multi purpose building in which the event was held. Their were over 70 teams from all over the country gathered for the day.

The Auckland regionals were being held at the same time, which meant a busy day with lots of events to watch, but it also meant stiff competition for us, with 25 teams to compete against in our division alone.

We had our interview at 9.30am and it went well. Next time though we would keep a build log which would have detailed our learning journey with the robots.

Our turn was after lunch so we got a chance to see most of the other teams in action before we had to take the stage. There were some very creative entries, including star wars robots, modified Robosapiens, and a robot with a diamond ring! For many schools this was their second or third time entering the competition.

Our performance went off without a hitch, and was really well received by the crowd who gave us a huge round of applause, which gave us a really good buzz.

It was a bit nerve racking when they called the schools for the finals, and they didn't call us! We found out later it was just by a hair that we missed out and that we had come 5th in the competition.

It's been a really awesome adventure and learning experience for our team, and we''ll take back ideas and determination to try again next year for an even better result!

Kelly Tarlton's

We had an awesome day at Kelly Tarlton's! We arrived just in time to see the stingray feeding which was really exciting. They are so big and graceful and it was amazing watching them swim up to the keeper and take food from her.